24 December 2021 Nativity Sermon
Leo the Great (5th Century)
Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should
have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up;
life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for
rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin,
came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at
hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the
pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.
In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God's
wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to
reconcile it with its Creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of
death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind.
And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in
the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will as they see the
heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the
angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God's goodness, what
joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?
Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the
Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we
were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we
might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and,
as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.
Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own
nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is
your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been
rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom.
Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy
Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a
slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.
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